Gloria Steinem, often hailed as a towering figure of second-wave feminism, holds a deeply contradictory legacy when it comes to sex work. While widely celebrated for her advocacy on reproductive rights and gender equality, her stance on prostitution is firmly within the SWERF (sex worker exclusionary radical feminist) tradition — marked by moralistic, victim-centered narratives that erase sex workers’ agency. Steinem has consistently framed prostitution not as labor, but as a form of gendered violence and exploitation, rejecting the legitimacy of “sex work” as a concept. She has publicly supported the Nordic model — criminalizing buyers and third parties — and campaigned against full decriminalization, most notably criticizing Amnesty International’s 2016 policy supporting sex workers’ rights as a “mistake” that legitimizes abuse. This position aligns her with carceral feminism, advocating for state interventions that, in practice, result in increased surveillance, arrest, and violence against marginalized sex workers, especially Black, brown, migrant, and trans women.
The contradiction in Steinem’s ideology lies in her insistence on bodily autonomy in the context of abortion rights while denying that same autonomy to people engaged in sex work. She upholds feminist values of choice and freedom — but only within boundaries that align with her own moral framework. Furthermore, she has invoked colonial feminist logic, suggesting that prostitution in the Global South is a product of male domination and poverty, ignoring the voices of sex workers in those regions who organize, resist, and advocate for labor rights and legal protections. Rather than engaging with the lived realities of sex workers, Steinem has often painted them as victims needing rescue, not as political actors or experts of their own experience. Her refusal to engage with modern, intersectional, and sex worker-led feminist analysis marks her as out of step with contemporary feminist ethics. While Steinem’s contributions to mainstream feminism are undeniable, her SWERF-aligned ideology continues to cause harm — reinforcing criminalization, stigma, and paternalism in the name of liberation.